For centuries, the human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As the cardiologist and bestselling author Sandeep Jauhar shows in HEART: A HISTORY, it was only recently that we demolished age-old taboos and devised the transformative procedures that have changed the way we live.

Follow the “Now Read This” Facebook page for discussion questions and other bonus material throughout the month, and at the end of the month, Jauhar will be answering your questions on the PBS NewsHour.

USA TodayHOW HARD CAN IT BE? by Allison Pearson
What it’s about: In this sequel to I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT, working mom Kate Reddy returns, almost 50 and juggling difficult teenagers, a husband having a midlife crisis, and an old flame who shows up.
Why it’s hot: Big Little Lies executive producer Bruna Papandrea has optioned Pearson’s new comic novel for TV.

LOCKING UP OUR OWN: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr.
A former public defender in Washington, Forman has written a masterly account of how a generation of black officials, beginning in the 1970s, wrestled with recurring crises of violence and drug use in the nation’s capital. What started out as an effort to assert the value of black lives turned into an embrace of tough-on-crime policies — with devastating consequences for the very communities those officials had promised to represent. Forman argues that dismantling the American system of mass incarceration will require a new understanding of justice, one that emphasizes accountability instead of vengeance.

PRAIRIE FIRES: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
Fraser’s biography of the author of “Little House on the Prairie” and other beloved books about her childhood during the era of westward migration captures the details of a life — and an improbable, iconic literary career — that has been expertly veiled by fiction. Exhaustively researched and passionately written, this book refreshes and revitalizes our understanding of Western American history, giving space to the stories of Native Americans displaced from the tribal lands by white settlers like the Ingalls family as well as to the travails of homesteaders, farmers and everyone else who rushed to the West to extract its often elusive riches. Ending with a savvy analysis of the 20th-century turn toward right-wing politics taken by Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, Fraser offers a remarkably wide-angle view of how national myths are shaped.

THE ANSWERS by Catherine Lacey
Catherine Lacey’s novel THE ANSWERS centers around people looking for the answers to love, to emotions, to ailing bodies. Mary, a young woman in New York City, is desperate for a cure for her paralyzing pain when she finally finds an effective treatment that she can’t afford. To pay for it, she joins eccentric actor Kurt Sky’s “Girlfriend Experiment” — a project for which Sky has recruited multiple women to fulfill different roles in an attempt to create the perfect romantic relationship — and becomes his “Emotional Girlfriend,” along the way learning more about herself and the nature of connection.

GOODBYE, VITAMIN by Rachel Khong
Heartbroken after her engagement is called off and feeling that her life has become a mess, 30-year-old Ruth quits her job and goes home to her parents to take care of her father, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. As his condition grows worse, Ruth devotes herself to researching supplements and meals that might restore his memory. Tender yet funny in turns, GOODBYE, VITAMIN offers poignant insight into family, memory, marriage, parenthood, love, and loss.

THE CITY ALWAYS WINS by Omar Robert Hamilton
Omar Robert Hamilton’s THE CITY ALWAYS WINS is a vivid, powerful portrait of Egypt’s failed revolution in 2011. Through the eyes of Mariam and Khalil, two young people fighting at the front lines of the revolution in the streets of Cairo and its political underground, THE CITY ALWAYS WINS is an urgent and relevant work that captures the realities of class friction, war, torture, and dictatorships.

MY LIFE WITH BOB by Pamela PaulMY LIFE WITH BOB is the ultimate book about reading books — New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul has kept a journal (named Bob) for 28 years, meticulously tracking every book she’s ever read. The result is an intimate look into her interior life and the ways in which the stories she has read have changed her own story. Clever and heartfelt, MY LIFE WITH BOB will appeal to anyone with a deep love for reading.readmoreremove

We can’t help but notice a trend—Farrar, Straus & Giroux titles have been dominating the cover of the New York Times Book Review for the past month!

SIX FOUR by Hideo Yokohama (February 26 issue)
“Superb… This novel is a real, out-of-the-blue original. I’ve never read anything like it. Yokoyama has written five previous novels and several collections of short fiction, and this is his first book to be translated into English… On the evidence of SIX FOUR, he’s a master.” — Terrence Rafferty

THE DARK FLOOD RISES by Margaret Drabble (February 19 issue)
“This humane and masterly novel by one of Britain’s most dazzling writers is…deeper than mere philosophy: a praisesong for the magical human predicament exactly as it has been ordained on Earth.” — Cynthia Ozick readmoreremove

Happy Friday! We’re reading two excellent memoirs this weekend:

IN THE DARKROOMby Susan Faludi
Pulitzer-winning journalist and feminist author Faludi’s “wrought and multi-layered memoir”* reveals that her estranged father came out to her as transgender at age 76. Both O Magazine and People Magazine chose it for their Best Books of Summer 2016 lists and it’s receiving rave reviews:

“IN THE DARKROOM is an absolute stunner of a memoir—probing, steel-nerved, moving in ways you’d never expect. Ms. Faludi is determined both to demystify the father of her youth… and to re-examine the very notion and nature of identity.”— New York Times Book Review

“It’s a gripping and honest personal journey—bolstered by reams of research—that ultimately transcends family and addresses much bigger questions of identity and reinvention. A–” — Entertainment Weekly

“This is a powerful and absorbing memoir of a parent/child relationship.”— *Publishers Weekly, starred review

Hear hear, June is Audiobook Month! And what better way to kick it off than by celebrating Macmillan Audio’s recent Audie Award winners!

Even the New York Times Book Review is in on the audiobook love! Check out their recent review for Bill Nye’s UNSTOPPABLE: “Nye is a performer. His audiobook is easy to listen to, especially if you grew up with the children’s television program ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy,’ in which case his voice will be downright familiar.”

The New York Times Book Review featured THE BEAUTIFUL BUREAUCRAT by Helen Phillips & ALL THAT FOLLOWED by Gabriel Urza—two Henry Holt & Co. debut novels that we’ve been talking up for months now and are finally on shelves!

“Are we pawns in the thrall of bureaucratic (Kafka) or totalitarian (Orwell) systems? Or are we, in fact, the ones with ultimate power; the arbiters — even unknowingly — of life and death? Helen Phillips deftly interrogates this existential divide in her riveting, drolly surreal debut novel, THE BEAUTIFUL BUREAUCRAT.

“Ultimately, THE BEAUTIFUL BUREAUCRAT succeeds because it isn’t afraid to ask the deepest questions. What is the balance of power and powerlessness between two people who love each other? Do individual souls matter? Can we create, should we destroy, and can we always tell the difference?” — New York Times Book Review

“Stories are shape-shifters in ALL THAT FOLLOWED Gabriel Urza’s strange and ambitious debut novel. Set in Spain’s Basque Country, the book revolves around the assassination of Councilman José Antonio Torres, as recounted by three characters: Mariana, his dubiously grieving widow; the American teacher Joni Garrett, who came to Muriga in 1951 and wound up staying for his entire life; and Iker Abarzuza, serving time for murder in an island prison, where he listens to the cries of shorebirds and receives the occasional letter from Mariana.

“ALL THAT FOLLOWED isn’t really about the murder. Its chief interests are memory and perception, and the eerie multi­dimensionality that arises when they are layered, somewhat imperfectly, on top of each other. On this front, ALL THAT FOLLOWED is a triumph — Urza delineates his characters’ perspectives with remarkable care. Each shows us a different angle of the fictional world, and illuminates a new aspect of Muriga’s past. As we approach the tragedy we knew was coming all along, the surprise turns out to be the surprises that are jumping out behind us — smaller than we expected, maybe, but sadder and stranger, too.” — New York Times Book Review